Editorial: Medicare for all really is 'the only answer'

[UglyGreed]

Dr. Quentin Young, one of the greatest economic and social justice campaigners of the modern era, has died at age 92. Young served as a personal physician for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and organized the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which provided medical support for activists during the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. He helped to shape and advance the call for an understanding of health care not as a commodity but as a human right.

Young was a friend and ally of this newspaper, a source of insight and inspiration for many years, and an ally in our campaigning for universal health care, which dates back to the days when Capital Times founder William T. Evjue was cheering on the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman to establish a national health care program. Over the years, we celebrated Young’s work and joined him and his dear friends, the late Madison area physicians Gene and Linda Farley, in championing efforts to establish a single-payer “Medicare for all” health care system in the United States.

More than three decades ago, as he was working to forge the Physicians for a National Health Program movement, Young warned of “the corporate takeover of medicine.” As PNHP notes, “he sounded the alarm about the growing encroachment of corporate conglomerates on U.S. health care, noting that giant investor-owned firms were rapidly subordinating the best interests of patients and the medical profession to the maximization of corporate profit.”

To counter the crisis, PNHP said in its statement on the doctor's death, Young became “the nation’s most eloquent and high-profile spokesperson for single-payer national health insurance, or improved Medicare for all.” He worked closely with an old ally from civil rights movement days, Congressman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., on behalf of H.R. 676, “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” the single-payer health care proposal backed by dozens of House and Senate members. Young gave credit to the efforts of President Obama — a friend and a patient of the physician’s Chicago clinic — to develop and implement the Affordable Care Act. But while he could identify positive elements of the ACA, Young argued it was an inadequate reform that left too many Americans with no coverage or insufficient coverage and that failed to control costs because it maintained an arrangement where “the insurance companies are still going to make their profits.”

http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/editorial/editorial-medicare-for-all-really-is-the-only-answer/article_03994471-dd67-5668-8869-e79ea1a45048.html

[konnie]

1. SINGLE PAYER IS NOT MEDICARE FOR ALL

you are mis-informed and spreading that mis-information. Medicare for all still includes private insurance in the form of supplemental policies and co-pays. and does not include drugs.

Single payer eliminates co-pays, and for profit private insurance to pay the balances medicare doesn't pay.

true single-payer covers every needed health expense while removing the profit at every step.

it's a nice slogan, but means nothing.

[nichomachus]

5. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. +1,000,000

I've been telling people this until I'm blue in the face.

Medicare is not "free" -- I pay a total of something like $4,500 a year for my Medicare coverage. That's because I chose a supplement plan instead of a Medicare Advantage (HMO) plan.

But, in either case, it keeps the insurance companies -- and their incredible overhead costs -- right in the middle of things.

The Medicare Part D is totally bogus. A giveaway to the drug and insurance companies. It was shoved down our throats with the same lies we hear about Obamacare and every other shit sandwich they serve us: "It's better than nothing. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's a start and we can fix it later." Medicare Part D was shoved down out throats in 2003 and nothing has been done in the last 13 years to "fix it."

You can join a low-cost or no-cost Medicare Advantage plan -- basically a fancy name for and HMO. The government gives the insurance company something like $900 a month for your coverage. The insurance company makes its money, as always, by denying you care.

I wish I could show you the confusing pile of paperwork I get. I get it from the doctor who treats me, the facility he treats me at (they bill separately), Medicare, and my supplement plan. If my doctor does tests, I get separate paperwork from the lab that took the sample and the pathologist who read the results. One doctor even submitted a $100 charge for reading the report the pathologist sent to him. And the billing is time shifted -- so I'm getting paperwork for treatment I had 10 months ago. I even designed a spreadsheet to keep track of it. It collapsed after about a month.

On the other hand, my friends in Europe, go to the doctor/hospital, get treated, show their medical card, go home, and that's the end of it.

[BernieforPres2016]

7. Medicare Part D pays $16 billion per year more for brand name prescription drugs

than the VA or Medicaid would pay for the same drugs. The administrators of Medicare are forbidden by Congress to attempt to negotiate lower prices. Those higher drug prices get passed on to people covered under Medicare. Welfare that goes from senior citizens to pharmaceutical companies.

[rock]

2. Medicare for all really is not only one of many answers

It is not even a practical answer at present. There is simple no way to get the Republicans (ugh! ptui! ptui!) to go along with it.

[Nanjeanne]

3. Medicare is a single-payer system. Just like most countries that have additional private

insurance. The goal is to have basic healthcare as a single-payer system. People will always have options to buy additional insurance. But Medicare is most definitely a single-payer system. The government gets the money and the government pays the bills directly to the doctors/hospitals/healthcare workers.

To parse words is silly. Medicare is a government-run single payer system where people have the option to buy additional private insurance add-ons.

[nichomachus]

6. That is a gross misrepresentation

See my post above.

[LWolf]

4. K & R